Wonderful evening.
The truck is loaded with tools and lumber and ready to leave tomorrow morning for a 100 mile roundtrip to m-in-law’s. Building new porch stairs and mowing lawns.
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Had to shovel scrap metal and garbage that has gotten built up in the work beater. Not fun. Had to empty the bed on a time crunch so I just shovelled it in front of the dumpster.
Of course I got yelled at and couldn’t go home until I got all that up. Was 90 degrees but in this humidity and it being a giant parking lot I about fainted, had to take breathers and a ton of water breaks.
Makes me wish I had a normal sized bath tub I could soak in. Might try to find an old clawfoot tub that doesn’t leak and build a hillbilly hot tub out of it. Copper coil wood heated thermosiphoning.
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I got so hot haying today in the same heat and humidity that I had to take a cold shower to cool back down before passing out. 90s and humid sucks. It actually was dripping rain drops just one here or there so I guess we hit 100% humidity. There are still 250 bales or so that I need to get in but they will have to wait till tomorrow at this point I am done for the day. Well after I water the pigs and check on the baby chickens and collect the eggs… always more work on a farm.
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Hey Dan
One will never get everything done on a farm . All you can do is work from can to can’t 
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My grandpa used to use the same expression building roads for the interstates around here. He got those contracts in the 60s.
He’d work my dad and uncle once they could operate a front end loader and motor grater, so about 12 years old each.
Dad says they worked from Can to Can’t and lunch was soda crackers with Texas Pete on em.
Kinda crazy to realize I drive on part of the interstate my Grandpa first built. I85 was his biggest contract.
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Hey Cody .
I know I 85 well . In the late 60s I would come through there 2-3 times a week in an ole F model Mack hauling from Birmingham to Marshville NC
Parts of I 20 through Alabama and Georgia was not complete and had to run the narrow two lane .
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Thanks Wayne. I went back out after dinner and loaded up the last 90 good bales I can sell before the rain came. It was just a quick cloud burst and ironically I didn’t have my truck keys as I was planing on leaving the truck in the field overnight when I parked it. I got soaked on the way back to the house to get the keys and by the time I got back to the load the rain was over but the hay is in the barn now. Good thing about my grapple system the bales are on their side and that wasn’t enough rain to do any damage. But yup I am back to can’t at this point.
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110 deg at 5:30. I did not venture away from the recliner and 2 large fans after 100 deg at 11 AM.
82 degree relief predicted for tomorrow.
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One more Heat-Plus day to endure.
High days for us was 113-115F/45C.
Today will be less at 96F/35C.
These heats have burnt much of the new Fir trees annual growth sprigs. Sun exposed surface temperatures hit ~150+F. Just too high for new growth baby cells.
Some plants go into keep-alive sacrifice of needles, leaf’s, and unripen fruits.
Other thrive in theses heats if well watered. Our corn/maize and sunflowers and tomatoes are loving this.
I’ve used a lot of ice cubes making iced unsweetened coffees and unsweetened black teas.
Ha! And adopted my Wife,s trick of 500ml frozen plastic water bottles.
She is right. Just hands holding them. And neck holding them blood-chills tricks the body; and helps a lot. Then sipping the icy cold melt from the bottles.
Without ever needing home AC it has been the progressively warmer nights that has been the irritating.
I’ve never been above 80F inside the house from the slow rise-up, from overnight chill-downs.
Nope. This time progressively now up to 86F late afternoon inside.
Mostly that has been the now two young-one’s with their many times a day in&outs!
We shall endure. And this too shall pass.
Steve Unruh
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Sorry Steve. It’s rough to hear. As you know, I did that heat for awhile too. It’s no fun. It’s only 75f here and it’s too much for me.
Here is Digawolf High Arctic for the cool down!
https://youtu.be/2OJgZ8vdM48
I wonder how well your firewood will dry out this year?
Anyhow, I wish you the best.
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Yes, stay cool you all. Your heat wave was in the news here yesterday.
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Thanks for the thoughts.
The Heat-wave for us is over now.
Some damage pictures:
The first three pictures shows the worst of new growth ends damages. Douglas Fir and Blue Spruce. Picture #4 shows early, but normal, drought season shedding off the the winter carried over old inner tree needles. They do this for moisture managements. Conifer trees shed needles many times annually like we do skin cells.
The damages are real. But . . . . cropped “disaster” pictures never show the real overall.
Nut trees are fine. Grapes are fine. Blue berrys are OK. Most true native plants are fine too. Just put into early; drought dormancy now.
Timing is everything.
Ours and other raspberries fruits are sun hammered to white and dead.
Our strawberry plants were fine the berry’s cycles through. Black berries vines are fine. Just now blooming.
My state is diverse especially west to east. If this heat became more prevalent we would just have to transition over to eastside pine and juniper trees.
Those brought over here to the wet-side grow poorly and and are disease prone. Any sneeze; and they die unexpectedly. High altitude trees brought down here to near sea level the same; barely live. Die easy. And almost never cone form here. They know they are out of place.
Ha! My sick humor was watching all of the Urban core electric light rail and tram systems shut down due to the heat affected equipment’s, and AC systems electrical Grid overloading. And watching them have to revert back to stand-alone diesel buses.
So where is this extra Grid capacity for changing over to all electric vehicles, eh??
Some power suppliers are doing daily rotating block brown outs. AC system electrical overloading. Choose . . . .kill Grandma and Grandpa with heat and cold . . . or zoom-zoom around “saving the planet” with plug-in electric vehicles.
Steve Unruh
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Yes, we are going to hear more of that. We have our own gas over here, but houses are almost collapsing, earth quakes in the mud. Just to much gas is pulled out and the ground is correcting that. I am happy not to live in the north and deal with that. Everything should be electric (no radtax for EV, saves us 115 euro/month for a BMW118D), with or without heatpump. Impossible in wintertime. Well, if one can take care for himself, there will be not to much trouble.
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If I ever get a battery car I will definitely attempt to only charge it with woodgas generated electricity! But not everyone is fortunate enough to have such a grid independent option.
And the batteries go bad eventually. Then it’s just hazardous waste.
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For the moment yes, but you can hold your breath so fast it changes. Leadacid was the same once, now you get payed a lot at the scrapyard if you bring them in.
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My idea too, and until then there wil be no DOW 
for me. I do drive in a lot of places and realy want to share that view. But, no DOW, no video.
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Local power outages here also. So far no outage for me.
The other issue is the mining for lituim. No body cares what happens to poor people in other countries.
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They shut down the lithium mine here in Kings Mountain. Cheaper to outsource to South America apparently.
The Cobalt is the really nasty stuff.
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If you think you hear bitterness in my views JoepK. you are correct.
Yesterday I paid $3.69 USD to fill up one of the vehicles on gasoline. This is the third highest in the USofA. Too much of my cost is state tax to build out the all electric vehicle charging stations. Plus a state and federal subsidy to buyers of these new vehicles.
Yep NOTHING applied to increasing the base Grid generating capacity!!
We are and have been for 50 years maximized out on more Hydroelectric development. And now the Fish-First people want to dams removals to restore stream flows and water temperatures to “before white-man arrived”.
New Nuclear plants got killed off Washington and Oregon states by the end of the 1970’s.
Wind power gets shut down by the Birdlovers (my wife) as man-made killing machines.
Tidal power proposals on the Eco’s watch list to stop as too environmentally damaging.
ANY existing use of Urban wastes to generate electrical power here in the PNW have been shut down; and futures locked out by PPM an PPB emissions monitoring.
So in the meantime in my corner of the state we have gone from 1970’s 90% Hydro/10% Nuclear to 50% natural gas generated/3% Nuclear/3% PV solar and wind each. And this is with the public moneys buying out and shutting down the energy intensive Industries of Aluminum and papermaking. And with 60 years of very intensive home individual energy savings changing overs.
So I would expect my elected leaders to step up and realistically address the full needs for to-electric transitions.
No. They mandate allowable new sold instead.
Hey! M-a-y-b-e I am one, wrong!
The modern all weather highways road systems were built up AFTER the sale and common use of automobiles. Users demanded this. Point to point truck freight later benefited. Railroads screamed.
So . . . . back-asswards; and clumber-some as it seems; maybe the horse has to push these carts of change instead of pulling/leading.
Yep natural gas has a high cost too. Cannot last forever. Neither gasoline and diesel. Change is inevitable.
S.U.
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Actually Canada had vast lithium reserves they also have newly discovered titanium. That is important because there is a LTO battery technology which has 30,000 cycles and would be perfect for homes or grid scale storage. No outgasing and no fire risk. It is bulky compared to Lithium ion or lifepo4 but lasts so much longer I suspect once we get past our one solution to all problems mindset we will see grid or home storage with LTO. I also suspect in a decade solar with storage will be part of the upgrades performed with every home sale. Just factor your energy into the morgue the bank will be happy to collect the interest and the home owner will be happy to not have a monthly electric bill. But then maybe I am a dreamer.
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